January 2014 Blog Posts (4)

On November 4, 1976, two K. D. Marine divers, Howard Spensley and Charles Meehan, were ordered into the water to recover the end of a broken pennant wire which was attached to one of the anchors of the drill rig, Ocean Voyager. Their task was not unlike the one Christopher Broady and John Clarke were ordered to perform in 1974.

It was a cold Thursday morning and Spensley, from Huddersfield, England and Meehan, from the Bronx, New York, were lowered by crane in a basket to the…

One month after the deaths of Charles Meehan and Howard Spensley in November 1976, the North Sea delivered yet another example of just how dangerous it was to send men into the North Sea daisy-chained together while diving on SCUBA.

A little after 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, Comex divers Trevor Murtough and Michael Moore were lowered from the deck of the Sedneth 701 to the waterline. Again, the job was to reconnect a pennant wire to one of the rig’s…

On April 29, 1976, after a diver nearly lost his life on SCUBA, the Diving Inspectorate of the Department of Energy issued a Diving Safety Memorandum drawing the attention of the Association of Offshore Diving Contractors (AODC) to the “inherent limitations of SCUBA diving equipment especially when worn with a free mouth piece.”

Incidents have arisen when a diver has been put at risk using SCUBA in marginal weather conditions. Endurance is limited and good communication…